Exploring sustainability disclosures in family firms: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Families own two-thirds of the world’s private businesses. It is an organizational model that has succeeded in various sizes, both small and large publicly listed companies. This study aims to explore the developments in sustainability reporting for family firms. The current study employs bibliometric analysis to examine family firms’ sustainability literature’s conceptual structure and influential aspects. Our study recruited 131 research documents from 2004 to 2021 based on our inclusion criteria. The findings from the conceptual analysis, the co-occurrence network of keywords analysis yields three clusters: CSR disclosures and corporate governance in family firms of emerging economics (red cluster), while red and green clusters focus on environmental performance, earnings management, and corporate governance in family firms. Our study has also highlighted the influential aspects of sustainability in family firms’ literature. Our findings have significant implications for researchers and policymakers. Our findings could be helpful to both family businesses and sustainability researchers. The study contributes to the business literature by illuminating the new research directions in sustainability reporting by family firms using bibliometric techniques.